Different Summers
by skeptic skeleton
Summary: AU: Chase wakes up after slipping away for four months in a faculty for haywire experiments like himself. But no one will tell him why he's there or what happened. His only hopes are his blind cellmate and possible partner in a coma, hopeless for recovery. Chase starts to feel more alone than ever as he strives to answer the main question: What really happened to them that summer?
1. 001

**I'm here with yet another Lab Rats story. You know, I really am coming up with ideas for different shows I swear, but when I have an idea for LR, I just kinda have to go with it, you know?**

**I'm actually really excited for this story because it's a lot differently done from my other stories, plot and genre wise. And the updating will be much more clean, which I will further explain in the bottom A/N.**

**For now, please read on and enjoy my new story, Different Summers.**

* * *

It's much like a prison - not that noone calls it that. At least, not anyone who knows better. The standard cells are three cement blocks on each side of you, with the front wall being thick iron bars that give you a magnificent view of the guard with jangling keys standing straight outside, taunting you with the freedom they never plan on handing to you.

But my room - the room where I've been thrown into since the Blackout, I assume - is much different: as are the people keeping me under their careful watch. Along with the regular security guards, people in important lab coats with bunches of files and papers, zoom in out, poking and prodding and getting their daily fill of toying with me, before leaving me to pull at the wrist restraints cutting into my bloodied wrists.

From careful observing whenever the metal slab door slams open and closed, the halls are as bleak and sterile as my room, but still maintaining it's differing looks from halls that led down prison cells. That same medical, bleach kind of smell that rots through hospitals is here, increased by the draft floating in through the crack splintering the wall from a corner of the tiny slot cut out of the far wall, meant to be a window. That's the only thing that keeps it from cell status - with walls of concrete and cold, it could very be a cell if it isn't for the lack of bars and noticeable presence of a door.

But I am sure, if someday I do see outside the door, there will be a guard, standing on duty to torture me with freedom these people don't plan on giving me any time soon.

It's been three, five das since I've come to conciousness here. With every moment, it's like the first when I woke up. A small blur of bland and blidning white, the unmistakable whir of machinery around me, and the coin like taste of blood stuck in my mouth. My head stills pounds, my body still aches, and my wrists still sting from the bite of the cuffs locking me in my current position.

Nothing changes, except for the flow of _Them_ coming in to monitor, prod, question, and observe. They aren't as bad as this place defines them to be, really. With their tight-lipped expressions, low and commanding voices, and emotionless way of acting, I assume they could be much worse if ever allowed to act on their own accord. But no, They go about their routine as almost robotically, following the motions like someone orders them around, up above yanking their strings. From the time I've been able to, everything I've seen Them do is the same, unless suddenly different because of someone giving carefully measured yanks to their strings. Goverment charged and caged, I'm sure.

With every drug pumped fresh and new into my veins every handful of hours, and the slowness of everything around, it's unclear how my brain is able to keep up with the unfamiliar terms spewed to identify me.

"Subject C, operation 2-2-9 is currently in place. Status: unresponsive to the accquired treatments provided by Lab Dorm X. Memory: invalid." There comes one. She is, from what I can tell, one of the better ones. She talks but still manages to prod for what she needs, unable to realize what I can give her. The only thing she lets define her is the white strip of block letters pinned on to her crisp lab coat: _Quint_.

"How are you feeling?" Her tone is as listless and indifferent as before, the last time They drugged me, I mean.

I give a hopeless tug to my restraints, feeling the rusty metal cut into my bloodied wrists. "Why am I here?" The question slips off my tnogue, one of the only things I give as a response.

A solid click of a pen, the little scratch-scratch of the end meeting paper. That damn clipboard used to chart my unflattering stubbornness, I assume.

With cold nimble fingers, the IV sticking out of my arm is out and I am up, in relief but aching. Everything hurts.

The woman is clearer now; her strict bun and wrinkled eyes now in my line of vision. I clanch my arms, the cuffes no longer holding me down. I feel an odd, brimming grateful emotion, but also pitying despair. Who knew what being released meant here?

"There have been steady requests for more appropriate strategies to be taken on your case," she says after instructing me out of the room. "The heavy medial arragements seem to hold no desired affect on you, much like the others."

"What others?" I ask dumbly. Of course, she doesn't answer. Instead her heels continue to click-click-click down the hall, providing the unspoken command to follow. I trail reluctantly behind, rubbing my sore wrists. The skin in sickly pale and layered with dry crusts of blood, sprinkling up the back of my hand. I flex my hands and wince in pain, unused to being able to do the ability. As unresponsive as I seem to whatever treatment inflicted on me, my brain activity and high level of anxiety have ceased to heavy fatigue.

"General Whitman has been assigned to your case, one of the upmost reliable candidates for cases much similar to yours."

I want to ask my endless amounts of questions, but by now I know better than to spout my tongue for it would result in more pen scratching and heavier interrogation methods.

For me, it appears highly unfair I'm kept from knowing what kind of case mine is exactly - when inprisoned, even the prisoners themselves are given information such as that. The only thing I've come to know of symptoms is extreme fatigue, large spaces of memory loss, and impossibly painful aching.

As she makes a sudden stop in front of a metal door, I recite the information I do know:

_I was taken_.

She shoves me inside the room; a deadblot locks me in, no chance of escape.

_I have a family_.

A seat at the table is waiting for me.

_I'm not the only one_.

A man, a shadowy figure dominates the other side. He says nothing as I sit down, keeping my eyes planted on the steel silver table top. The room stays silent, my hefty breathing the only thing in the sharpness of the quiet.

It takes a few moments before a glossy picture slides in front of me. It's a man. His dark, short hair is scruffy, his skin is pale, and his are sunk into his face, his cheeks hollow. I am supposed to know this man, but I don't.

"Who is this?" I ask, picking it up and holding it right in front of me, clear to see in the dim lighting of th interrogation room.

General Whitman takes his time with saying anything. He doesn't actually, until slamming his meaty fists hard against the table top, standing so abruptly his chair goes flying to the ground. "Don't play dumb with me, son." His voice is as bulk and deep as his appearance would make it seem. He dioesn't have a lot on me hieght-wise, two or three inches at most. But he looks pretty stocky, with an extra 30 or 40 pounds on me. His eyes are a dark kind of gray, like the cement surrounding us, locking us in. He wants answers, but not the ones I can give him.

"I'm not!" I protest. The picture flies from my hand and back to the table, slipping close to the edge. I must have a habit of talking with my hands, because they fly as fast as the words from my mouth. "I've never seen this man before in my life!"

"Don't you lie to me!" His loud, angry, accusing voice bounces off the wall, his potbelly pressing into the table as he leans closer. I swallow the knot in my throat but don't look away, meeting his challenging gaze. Challenging me to defy him.

This place's doubt in me couldn't be anymore obvious.

Two more glossy square are thrown in my face. I scramble to catch them, not letting them fall to the floor. I set them on the table ginerly, taking in the faces. One's a girl. Her dark hair falls down her shoulders, her eyes mischevious despite the clear bruises swelling over her eye and the cuts slicing her eyebrow in half. Her lips swell and the corners stay down, her pride evident but defeat clear, too.

The boy is similar, yet keeps his air of a fighter. He looks stronge, the sides of his hair singed in a way, cuts blooming around his mouth and his nose crooked to the side, broken. But still, he is full of pride in his dark eyes, although defeated.

A pang. A pounding in my head growing sharper until I have to drop the picture, clutching my head in my hands. I start to breath faster and faster, the room spinning.

General Whitman's banging grows louder, the sharp contact of his fists to the metal a horrible hurricane of noise in my ears. I nearly fall from my chair in pain.

The two photos - the guy and the girl. They're doing something to me. Something so strong and urgent it knocks at the side of my head, in between my eyes, makes my senses sharper. But why? What did I do with them? Were they from the large gaps I can't collect? Are they, somehow, here too, suffering along with the prodding and questions and drugs just like me?

General Whitman probably doesn't stop his banging until he realizes he lost me, that I've tipped from my chair and fall to the ground, my head banging on the concrete floor and rendering me useless.

He is done with me for now.

**{~~~~~~~~}**

It's three days later before I wake up. The lack of metal cuffs and IVs poking out of me catches me off-guard, bring me up from the rock hard cot I'd been placed on. It surprises me They are not hovering and prodding like usual too.

The sudden change confuses me and make my head spin.

"They brought you here Tuesday," a slightly high voice says from my right. I jump. They put me with someone else too. This also shocks me.

Slowly, with clear caution, I ask into the dark corner, "And what day is it now?"

"Thursday," it says, repsonding again, "You've been out for...65 hours."

"How do you know this?" I stand on shaky legs, taking my time with walking to the other side of the room. That's another thing - the room is much more cell-like, but still no iron bars; we're still in that damn place They run.

A boy much skinnier and shorter than me lays on a cot indentical to mine, hanging from rusting chains attached to the wall. his eyes are closed, his dark skin is pale, and he look too young to be any type of crimminal mastermind. Is he here under the kind of circumtances I am?

Gingerly, I take a set next to him. The cot creaks; the boy says nothing.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Leo," he says simply. While he talks, his eyes never open. His face never changes, doesn't falter from it's default expression. "But here They call me EX-49228." Leo holds up his left arm to make a point, as if wanting me to look at it. My curiosity eats at my mind, so I take it and flip it to reveal the underside of it. The short sleeve of his olive green shirt falls away, and I get a glimpse of the black inky letter stamped onto his upper forearm. Right there it reads exactly what he said: **EX-49228**.

"Does that mean I have one, too?" I frantically pull at my sleeves, rolling it up to expose my skin. The only flaw of my arms though are the nasty bruises of the restraints and the many pokes of the IVs.

Leo doesn't react to panic. "Probably, but they don't put it in the same place on everyone. Yours must be where you can't see it."

"My name is Chase." It slips out before I can stop it, before I can think if it's true. But the minute it's out there, hanging in the air with finality, I know it's true. One of the few details I can gather from my past life.

"Nice," Leo comments, shifting to cross his legs. Despite his surroundings he looks completely comfortable, at ease almost, with the entire situation. "But I've heard of you before."

"You have?" I say surprised. "How? I hardly know who I am myself."

He says nothing for a while, and my next question slips out of me before I can hold on to it and stop it. "Why are your eyes closed? Don't you know where you are?"

"Are they? Closed, I mean?" Leo sighs, like he's tired of explaining his story. It's then I wonder how many times he ever had to tell it, how long They've kept him, people like me, here. "I can't ever tell anymore. Not since They took it away."

I stumble, a strangled noie erupting from my throat. My feet trip over each other and I've clumisly landed on my own cot, breathing fast as I face the truth: They made Leo blind. They robbed him of his sight - purposely. But why? How can They stamp us and rob of us of our senses when some of us don't even know what we did? And for the ones who did know, what if it was for something good?Is making a stand no longer the better choice?

"Why? Why did They do that to you? Why do they keep us here?" I ask, my voice is high and loud, angry as it hops over itself bouncing off the walls.

Leo's answer is simple.

"Because we're the experiments."

* * *

**Okay, so how the updating will go is pretty simple and I think you guys will think it's much more effective. It goes like this:**

**I will write three chapters at a time, then post them within a three-to-four day radius of each other. The only time it should take longer is when I'm writing the next three chapters after the third one posted. But depending on the process, the next set of three chapters should already be in motion by the time the second chapter is already up and the third chapter waiting to be posted.**

**I tried to make that as simple as possible, so please don't call me crazy. I thought it sounded like a good process, made the updating much faster for the readers, and was something new I wanted to try. If it works out well, it will be this way for a lot of my upcoming Multi-Chap stories.**

**And as for the story itself - the summary matters a lot for the first, I don't know, four chapters? It makes it a lot easier to understand and the plot a lot cleaner than I think it is.**

**Please review and tell me your thoughts on Different Summers!**


	2. 002

**Hopefully this chapter clears up anything the first chapter made confusing, and I'm trying to stick to one POV only and work on writing male characters, so this story is perfect practice. Sorry about the late update. I promise I'll stick more to my schedule next time, guys.**

**I plan on the chapters gradually getting longer as I write them, so this should be a smidge longer than the first.**

**And I'm open to any chapter titles for past and upcoming chapters if you're interested in coming up with a few for me. All credit will go to you of course.**

* * *

Because I am no longer injected with as many drugs (the only excuse being I'm interacting with another person, I assume), trays of cold lumps and hard piles of food are given to us. Leo is slow with eating his portion, if eating any at all. I time what I eat and when, drinking water on most days and using tiny bites of food to maintain any strength.

They are still here, monitoring us from the tiny cameras shoved into the dark corners of the room. Leo pointed them out to me my second day awake. He said they beeped and that he could hear them, once I could fully see them.

"I don't hear a thing," I told him after he said this.

He shrugged like he didn't expect me to. "Blindness has perks."

Leo opens his eyes, but closes them slow enough that I know he's aware of himself doing it, but not of how long they stay open.

I decide I like Leo. He makes for a nice, easily made alley, and despite his lack of sight is very intelligent for his age of fourteen. But in a way, a small part hates him, just a little, because of all he holds access to. All the information Leo tells me of when he will just talk and talk—the small, tiny part that hate him keeps nagging that I could've had the same kind of knowledge at my disposal, if only something had gone right. Hell if I know what that thing is ever again.

They only come three, four times a day—three for meal delivery, once or twice to collect one of us. That is another difference of having a cellmate: They take you out when you're needed in one of the interrogation rooms, nothing done in front of everyone else.

Drugs are still injected into me—of should I say, us. This, They don't mind doing with the present, because it is the same motion, not anything that needs to be categorized specially.

It's an early kind of morning when I have to ask more questions. There isn't a window for me anymore, and the only way to track time is to keep track of how many footfalls you hear and how loud and evident the whir of the ever in use machinery is. It had to be late-every kind of time, because for a while, the halls outside are still.

"How do you know everything?" I ask into the darkness. Shadows fall over each other, the cell completely dark and eerie. "Why is it you have all these secrets on Them?"

Leo takes a long time to answer. "Like I said, blindness has perks. This Faculty only cares about how drugged you are and how well their precious little experiments act under the treatment. As far as they're concerned, those drugs should keep their words safe." He takes a long pause. The pause is so long I think he may have fallen asleep, but his breathing isn't enough to be.

Leo continues, his voice low. "But some of us are immune."

I think to earlier in my memories here, stuck on that damn metal table with those metal cuffs and chain, the IVs poking out of me. How They wrote down everything that happened within the time They injected them in me. From keeping a close eye on their indifferent facial expression, They weren't too pleased with the results. And as far as I can tell, they still aren't.

"Immune to what? What do They want with us?" I ask hungry for more.

Leo shifts, his stiff cot protesting under his scrawny body, and doesn't answer me. But we both lie awake for a long time. I think he may have been awake still by the time my eyes grow tired and I drift off.

The next morning Leo is gone when I wake up. I stretch then take a sip of the lukewarm water sitting in the smudged cup on the morning stray. I must've slept longer than usual, I realize, flipping my wrist to see a fresh prick of a needle. They did it while I was asleep.

The crackers on the tray next to a puddle of gray—sauce, I want to say—are stale, but I nibble on one as I pace, awaiting Leo's return. I am more use to him being taken away in the evenings, not mornings.

It's three idly eaten crackers and a third of water later that he comes back, carefully maneuvering his way from the doorway to his cot. Leo lays there for a while. I pace and watch him, quiet. Then, with his bony left hand he waves me closer. I take my seat on the edge of his cot.

Leo's eyes are wide open. I always saw that whenever they did open his brown orbs are stuck on a glimmering moment, a moment so wistful and private I don't dare ask about it.

He looks at the empty ceiling, seeing nothing as he says, "I saw him. I saw the boss."

I suck in a breath. I knew there was a bigger power over Them, but never once has Leo ever said anything about a boss man until now.

"Is that why They took you away?" I hope not to seem too eager for him to tell me of what could possibly be a severe punishment, but I can't contain my need for more details. "Did he want to see you?"

Leo shakes his head. "If he ever wanted to interact with us personally, They wouldn't be around as much as they are," he says, "But no. They have me working with someone else now; still no better than the last."

Again, I wonder how long has he been here, and what his story could possibly be.

"We were walking down a hallway, and we passed by this door, I think." Leo's eyes close again. "I withdraw my earlier comment—blunt blind humor, I guess. I _heard_ him, really. His voice was really mean, and he was hollering at the top of his lungs. I think it could've been his son in there with him, because a voice like ours followed. I wanted to stop and hear more, but They pushed me forward before I could hear anything else."

I adjust on the cot. "What did he say?"

"It was all really loud and smushed," Leo admits. "But I think it was something about missions."

_Missions. _They word set off alarms in my head. Just like the photos. My head starts to pound, my vision blurs. I hop from the cot and kneel to the ground, groaning in pain as the alarms continue to ring loud and painful in my ears.

Leo shifts and sits up suddenly—I can barely just make out his figure through the blur my eyes are seeing.

By the time the pain fades away, my body is sweaty, my fists are shaking, and I'm still on the ground.

Leo has swung himself so that his feet touch the ground. I can only right myself enough to look at the tips of his regulated boots They force us to wear with the rest of the apparel. I carefully rise to a sitting position, switching so that I am on the ground instead of my knees. I looked up to see his face grim.

I've never seen him look so serious before and it looks kind of out of place on his features, to be honest.

"You should really talk to her," Leo comments, mostly to himself.

I groan, crawling quite pathetically to drag myself onto my cot. I lay on it and stare at the rough, lumpy ceiling. "Talk to whom?" I ask tiredly, but don't receive an answer. Like I thought I would anyway.

Leo is lying back down again, facing away from me. Ha, like he could see me anyway.

"That one girl," he insists, making me freeze. Despite my building trust in Leo I haven't developed the courage to tell him about the boy or girl or man from the interrogation incident, or how heavy their affect had been on me. "She knows everything about you, you know."

I wonder how this could be, and if in return, she once told me things about her as well.

"Do you know where she is?"

Leo shifts again; I could see his face this time. "I heard Them talking about it late one night," he confesses quietly. "It was my first night here. They were talking about this girl who had escaped; was sent here with her partners under heavy arrest." If he could see, he would be looking right at me. "One of them was you."

My breath hitches, catching my throat. "How can you be sure of that?"

"Because I heard them say your name."

"You mean, my experimental code?"

Leo shakes his head, the cot creaking and chains rattling.

"No—your _real name_."

**{~~~~~~~~}**

Since we've become cellmates, Leo has learned to open up to me a lot more. He tells me things sometimes late after They have stopped with their daily duties and the machines are no longer making their regular noises.

He told of this girl he liked before he came here—her name's Janelle. He tells me his theories of his sight coming back; he knows he's hoping too much, but something was suspicious about the amount of drugs pumped into us on the hour, and I couldn't help but agree.

And Leo knows a lot about me, whether I tell him what I know or not. It seems like we've met before, in the grayness of the months I couldn't recall. I tried asking about this only once, and was promptly ignored.

But I can't find the courage to tell him of the dreams—the flashbacks I assume they are. Like Leo and his sight, I believe They are putting too much faith in the drugs and cells to keep us stuck in oblivion, never to find what they are hiding or what we did. Leo knows, bits and pieces only, but he won't tell me. When I ask why this is the answer is the same:

"Because they should tell you before I should."

I know who he means—that same boy and girl from the photos, the ones who seemed linked to everything just like me. I asked Leo about the man, too one night, and he told me in vague detail about his connection, accurately assuming he had one.

"He's a once-famous scientist; the reason we're all here really," he said drily, waving his hands above him in the air, tracing something and nothing at the same time. "No one knows where he is now though. But probably doing the same as us—rotting in a jail cell somewhere awaiting further punishment."

He sounds a twinge sad; I wonder what roll the scientist plays in this game then, for him to suffer along just as well as the rest of us.

"What about the guy?" I ask. Leo hasn't said anything about him yet, and I could feel myself itching to know why.

Leo's face darkened. Can he tell when it did that?

"He's in a different faculty," Leo says stiffly, "Not far from this one, but much worse."

What could than this, I don't know and was shuddering at the mere thought of finding out.

Leo is still tense by the time I give my attention back to him, so I drop the topic for now, but ache to find out more later.

"About the girl, when can I see her?" Leo can't be the only one with answers; she has to hold something, if not more to what happened in the space I can't remember. "Will I be able to meet her?"

He takes his time like always. "Perhaps," he tells me thoughtfully, sitting. The cot creaks; he ignores and begins to pace. Sightless, Leo is still able to stop and start before banging his body against the walls of the cell, which I find quite impressive when he makes it sound like he's been blind since he was thrown in here.

Again, I want more details to the story, but don't push him because if anything that would only get me farther away from the point I want to be at.

"But, we'd have to be real sneaky." He turns in what he assumes is my general direction. Leo's eyes are open again, sightless as they stare a couple inches away from my left shoulder. But he's close enough. "Are you up for it?"

"Risk level?"

"SWAT lockdown; possible annihilation laws or removed and switched to another Lab's faculty."

He says it so promptly I think again if this is another puzzle to that guy's story. I store in the back of my brain, nodding my agreement.

Only to realize he can't see it and still waits for me to voice my answer.

I breathe heavily through my nose, nodding again for myself. "Alright; we'll do it tomorrow at midnight—an hour after machine shut down."

Leo smirks a little, one corner of his mouth twitching as he feels his way back to his cot.

I can't help but watch as he does. His movements are so natural—the way his fingers lightly skim the wall and his other arm cutting the air on his other side to make sure no other obstacles other than the ones planted in his brain are there.

For the rest of the night we don't talk, but don't sleep. One of Them come in to give us our nightly dose. I can't even tell the plunge the needle takes into my arm, how he drains the thick fluid into my veins before marching back out.

I can't even tell anymore.

Leo is awake for a long time, and I always want to say something. Just to fill a void, but don't. With him, moments of talking are chosen at random, whether we realize we're doing it or not.

I stay awake the longest, listening to his even and steady breathing as he sleeps. While he does, I think to all his moments. Never a moment of weakness; not even a crack of his voice as Leo described Janelle to me.

She sounds beautiful. Cunning and beautiful, he said in a sigh. She was the most important thing to me.

Leo is a small and scrawny fourteen-year-old guy, supposedly in ninth grade this year, he told me, but by the way he talked so confidently and sure, I knew he meant it. It took a lot to mean something people don't think you know a lot about.

_The most important thing to me._

Again, like he always does intentional or not, he gets me thinking. Leo was witty in that smart, high school nerd kind of way. He converses with me in a way that suggests he thinks the same of me. But a pull of my gut and the dull throb between my eyes tells me better—he knows how to act with me because he knows me. Or something about me. The way Leo tells me the things I want to know, but the things he doesn't push, tells me just as much.

But I still have many questions for me, but I can't push him away. He's my ally.

And, in our own guy/prison-mate/just kind of happened way, friends.

As I drift off to sleep, I think about how Leo never ceases to amaze me.

* * *

**I don't know about this. This chapter is more of an informational set-up chapter than anything. But chapter three is real important and in the works as we speak.**

**So, who do you think this mysterious boss man is? And what's the deal with his son?**

**And I just love the way I set Leo for this story. He's still like the show, except more involved and mature than in the show, you know?**

**Please review and tell me your thoughts and questions.**

**And before I forget, here are the answers to some general questions in the reviews I got for the first chapter:**

**Bree or Adam being in this story will be revealed in the next chapter. And it was partly revealed in this one, too.**

**As for the bionics—all in due time.**

**Bye for now!**


	3. 003

**Hey guys. Sorry the chapters have been a little shaky when coming to updates. But don't worry, I have them written down and they will start to come more frequently once I begin summer break.**

* * *

Leo never ceases to amaze me.

The next night, the last time They walk by our cell, Leo holds his skinny fingers out to me. I manage to just barely make out their outline. As seconds tick by he adds a finger to mark the minutes. It feels like an eternity for him to reach five, and then both of us are moving.

Another thing I have learned about Leo is that he's a man of many talents, not to mention secrets. Whenever I think I have a good part of him figured out, he locks up and I'm back to scraping at the surface.

It takes a delaying minute of feeling around a corner for Leo to find something skinny and small between his way to the door and kneels as I ask, "How'd you get that past Them?"

Leo shrugs as he continues his work. "I got my ways."

I decide to leave it at that.

Leo is incredibly fast for a blind person. We take strange twists and turns down the deep, dim halls of Faculty **X-7**—ones that make my head spin. Each corridor was different than the other, difficult for me to memorize the way.

I am the only one of the two of us who seems to consider the possibilities of flashing alarms, They running around screaming of escape experiments don't dare speak aloud, worried about my voice getting us for sure.

Instead, I take in the detail. The walls are the dark color of steel, the floor tiles a glassy marble that reflects the light rafters dangling high above my head. It's pretty nice for a prison/lab.

Leo keeps close to the wall, running his fingers over the plates next to the doors. Sometimes he would stop to focus on the lettering. On the fifth one, second on the right from a dead end, he stops.

"This is it," he says confidently. "I know it is."

Just to be sure I glance through the slim window cut out on the door. Then I learn to never doubt Leo, despite whatever situation.

She looks tiny and deathly pale. The room is designed to give off the impression of a hospital, dull colors and all. But They are still there, all throughout the room. Her hands and ankles are kept restrained, as if They expect a struggle when she awakes. With her head lolled to the side, I can see the flash of stamped ink on her neck.

She has a code. Just like Leo and I.

I try the door; locked.

Leo sighs before I can ask. He pushes me aside and kneels, brushing his fingers along the width of the door, finding the lock in record time. I count the seconds; 120 isn't bad.

"Three minutes," Leo considers as the door swings open smoothly under his palm. "Not too shabby."

I shuffle in behind him. The usual headache pounds persistently behind my eyes when I stop at the side of bed. I lean close to take a closer look at the code on her neck.

**EX-2279**

I'm still clueless to what the numbers mean, but I suspect they serve as a production code of sorts.

"Surprise, surprise," Leo mutters dryly making me look up. He is indicating the syringe needle inserted into the underside of her right arm. "Pumping drugs into a comatose; probably the thing still keeping her under."

The pound still rings loudly in my ears, but I have to try something—just to ease myself.

Gingerly I touch my fingers to her left wrist. There is a gasp; I'm sure it's mine. But then I hear a startled noise—the first unsettling noise I've ever heard Leo make.

Images flash behind my eyes, going off like fireworks.

_"Chase!" It's the girl, and she's crying, fighting frantically to escape the masked man's hold. His gloved hands dug into her arms with a grip of vice._

_My own head whipped from side to side. Where was Adam? And Leo? Were they taken already?_

_In anger my voice howled, lashing at the hands that restrained me. I felt myself start to weaken, almost like dying away._

_"No, no, no," She began to say, looking at me with wild eyes. "Chase, stay with me. Chase!"_

_It was faint as the memory begins to fade away, but my voice was loud and echoing, called out to her._

_"Bree!"_

I gasp and my body rolls in a shudder, falling to my knees as I return. I feel sweaty and dizzy, my mouth full of cotton.

Leo doesn't need to see me to know of my painful vision. "What did you see?"

I slowly rise, gripping the edge of the metal bed contraption.

"Adam," I say lowly, trying the name out. It still brings the same pound as Bree's did, but somehow duller, more of a thud. "Where is he?"

Leo takes in a sharp intake of breath.

"I don't know."

**{~~~~~~~~}**

It's my fifth, maybe sixth time going to the interrogation room—more like hall, because of all the wails I hear when I'm escorted down there—and the investigator's tricks are getting as stale as my excuses for him.

The only people who knew that I know are Leo and possibly Bree. (He says the possibility percentage of her actually hearing us while we are in there with our visits was fairly high, but promises nothing.) General Whitman always put me on edge with his attitude of always knowing what I have for sure locked between Leo and I, leaving it as I am dragged into that damn metal chair across from his indifferent, angered face.

But I remain the same each painfully long interaction with him—I won't tell a word of what I know.

General Whitman glances at me often as he paces the length of the room, unable to decide what to do with me I assume. He, I'm sure, is aware of the drug's supposed effect on me, so why bother? Isn't the needle and chemicals supposed to make me forget? To make me remain here?

Or are They hiding stuff from him too?

Horrible crying starts outside the room—it must be coming from the room across from mine. I wince and squirm in my seat; I hate hearing listening to people cry, and here was no different. Only it's much worse than what I'm used to—or was, that is. I can remember (only vaguely) holding my sister in my arms, so tiny and small, as our parents scream below us, bellowing and echoing off the walls and vibrating up to where we lay in her small pink bedroom, waiting for the storm to pass.

I remain silent and stoic as General Whitman's beefy fists pound the table, screaming everything he's already said at one point. I let him do it for a while before he tires and is sick of me, dismissing me with a grunt. One of Them is waiting outside the door and wordlessly leading me back to my cell.

To my surprise, Leo is there too with his escort. He's as gray-faced and sunken-eyed as the rest of Them, immediately sparking my pity. They never seem to know what enough, exactly; that's the only way I can seem to phrase it to myself. The men especially—so brainwashed that they only appear to have complete control over Their motor skills. The woman can be seen exactly like this, except less so in a way.

I lock away my questions for now, saving them for Leo later.

Leo's guard lets him in first, mine quickly shoving me in afterward. I stumble to my cot, both of us silent as we listen to the _clump-clump-clump_ and _click-clack-click_ of their footfalls fade away down the hall.

When they finally do, Leo darts up, eyes wide and shining with excitement as he turns in my general direction. I wonder sometimes—can he tell how easily his eyes give him away, even with the thin white film dulling their brown color.

Another question to unanswered, I think as he begins to talk, wildly lashing into detail with his hands.

"You'll never believe it! Their voices were so loud, it instantly gave them away." Leo ducks his head down, tapping out his mental math work on his fingers against the cot. For being so smart without any sight, it's almost a scary thought to think of how genius he would be with it back in his control.

"Who?" I ask in confusion. "Them?" I think back to all the gray faces and blank, listless stares, wondering how They could possibly reach such an alarming volume. That control must've also fled whenever whatever controls Their minds set in, whatever that procedure may be.

His head shakes back and forth wildly. "No, no, no," he dismisses my idea, "the boss man and his son! We were walking down the Four Turns hallway, and passed door eleven when I heard their voices behind the thirteenth! It was so loud and shaking, you didn't even have to be near twelve to know what door it came from."

_Discovery about Leo of the day_, I think to myself, _He is also a man of many numbers. _It makes sense for numbers to such an outlet for the little guy with his expanded knowledge and I all, I guess. Numbers and equations are the one thing you can predict while vulnerable to the expecting and _un_-expecting.

"Have you figured out who it is yet?" I ask eagerly, shuffling to kneel by his cot for me. He doesn't look alarmed by the added pressure of my hands pushing down on the cot. But why should he? Nothing ever takes Leo by surprise. "Anyone from my past?" I can't help but add that in; the thought of the man behind all this and my memories is too great not to consider.

Leo tilts his head in thought. Replaying the voices, maybe?

"It was definitely a son," he says slowly, still working it out. I nod for him to go on, but feel a wave of stupidity when I realize, yet again, that he can't see it. So with a nudge of his knee, he continues. "He was speaking really loudly, like he was about to pass on an important duty and there was already a screw-up before the main event happened."

I lean back on my heels. "Could he be sending him to another Faculty?"

Instantly, almost like a reflex, I think of Adam and his strong and childishly innocent and bruised face passes over my brain for a second. And like that, the dull pain is back, but not as great as before.

Leo lays down, rubbing at his temples like recalling these memories are slowly killing him. "I need rest," he announces, and promptly flips away from me, his shin hitting against the wall as he did so. I wince at the blooming pain that should've come with the hard blow, but Leo doesn't even flinch.

I sigh and stand. Leo is a man to work on his own terms; once he deemed it ready, he would give the information. But for now, I'm left to wait.

Laying down on my own cot, I slowly let exhaustion lull me to a restless sleep.

**{~~~~~~~~}**

_Bree paced the length of hideout, anxiety sculpted into her features. "How can we be sure? Are they really hiding out there? Or are they making idiots out of us getting away with it all at once?"_

_Leo sighed from where he was seated in front of his desk, Davenport's tablet in hand. "Bree," he said confidently, "I have no doubt that our GPS system has failed—mostly because I came up with it."_

_I snorted from couch. For a hideout, it was well furnished but pretty small with a desk, a couch, a large panel of TVs hooked to our monitor and some wirelessly receiving signals from Davenport's mainstream from his lab._

"_Please, if it wasn't for I pointing out the many flaws and tweaking them to fit the average standards, your plan would be chucked into an awaiting garbage bin."_

_He squinted at me, annoyed. "You're really going to milk the whole smarts thing, aren't ya?"_

"_Every damn second," I agreed smugly._

_Adam looked between the two of us, his faraway look present like always, "You two…" he pointed between Leo and me, "are very knit picky about each other."_

_Leo looked to me and we shared a look. It was true, for the most part, because as the more intelligently advanced, it was a major competition. But he was trained that way; I became bionic and intelligent all within an hour of them finding me. Naturally, competition was inventible._

"_Guys, can we please just focus on the mission at hand here?" Bree said, stopping her mad pacing session to look at and throw her hands up._

_There really wasn't much of a mission; the two Slovinkcy Brothers were very gullible and thought too much into their themes, making them easy targets for capture. Our job was to wait it out and pounce, the surprise tact to our advantage._

**{~~~~~~~~}**

With a jump, I awake, nearly falling off the bed. My clothes stick to my hot and flushed skin. That pounding thumps between my eyes and behind my temples persistently like a warning. Is that going to happen every time I do something like this?

Across from me, Leo sleeps fitfully, alert for anything even in his sleep. I think back to what I gave away in my dreams and realize that everything it told makes sense. Leo is incredibly smart, and this Faculty is one for experiments.

So, does that mean we are bionic experiments?

* * *

**I promise, I've already thought about the next chapter and my summber break is coming up soon, so hopefully it won't take as long as this one.**

**Please leave a review to tell me what you thought about this chapter.**


	4. 004

**I'm sorry about the long wait, but I've been trying to work out how I want future chapters to go so I could figure out how this chapter and chapter five and so on would go.**

**Once I finished up with Long Live and tie some stuff up on independent books I've been writing, I promise my focus will be more on this story.**

**In Lab Rat-related news, was I the only that loved the Parallel Universe episode? I thought the idea of parallel universe was epic, as was the idea of putting Billy Unger in a jersey.**

**Okay, I'm done now.**

* * *

"The irony is really hilarious, once you think about it." I sit up in my cot, looking over to Leo in the depth of shadows, lying peacefully on his own cot as he talks to the ceiling.

Leo's especially chatty tonight, but I don't want to ruin it by asking too many questions and having him lock up again.

"What kind of irony?" I ask carefully.

He takes his time. "We were a team, you know." This, I really do know. As opposed to the times he's said the same thing about stuff I really don't know—or at least don't think I know. "We did things you—well, this version of you, I guess—wouldn't believe."

I think he would be amazed at how much I believe at this point. Such a short point, but long at the same time. Can things be like that—the opposite of each other at the same time?

"And stopping government clones like They are happened to be one of those things?"

He nods. I can't see it, but hear the rustle. "Precisely."

Then Leo turns over, done talking for now, and faces the wall.

I lay back down. I wonder if he really does want to see, which, I chastise myself, is stupid thought. Of course he would want to see. I think back to one of my first memories with him, where this Janelle girl was mentioned, but only briefly.

A mysterious tug comes to my gut, pulling and snapping it back. If he wants to see anything, it's probably her, I decide. The shadows began slipping, fading away for my own blackness, the darkness of my subconscious.

Right before I fall to sleep, I let my mind wonder if I too have a girl somewhere that, if I am ever blind, I would want to be my only vision, my only sight.

I don't come up with an answer before I'm asleep.

**{:::::::::}**

The thing is, shortly after I discover something about Leo, I find something out about myself. It's weird, because it would be sudden and hit me like a jolt of lightning would, but while it always seems to throw me off, Leo is never surprised.

"It's because we're all connected," Leo explains to me when I bring this up. "We are team; we were made to be connected in certain ways that would help us on missions, or just keeps us together as a team. We were made for a reason."

He lets his word hang, not finishing or explaining.

Meanwhile, I spend most of my time thinking about this team. He doesn't tell me more than what my fuzzy flashbacks hint at. From what I could gather, there was—or, is, I guess—only five of us: Leo, Bree, Adam, myself, and this famous scientist who started it all.

Leo doesn't give anything about this scientist, and I don't ask in fear of delaying any coming information about him. But I have recovered enough about the basics to read in between the lines—his (along with Adam and Bree's) history ran deeper with this guy than mine did even before They took away my memories.

But They took it away because of him; I know something about that man that the others didn't or They and the Government wouldn't have bothered with clouding me for so long.

"It's odd to watch someone so confused piece together things in such a clever pattern," Leo comments after I admit what I was thinking about.

I raise my eyebrows, my lips twitching. "Watch?" I tease.

He scowls, looking at the ceiling. "Shut up."

We slip silent and disappear inside our heads. I have a gut feeling that things were always like this when we're alone together, before we were just cellmates and loosely gathered allies. Leo doesn't trust me, that's for sure. I wouldn't blame him; I am the only one with my memory picked. They could already be inside my head.

I don't want to think about that. I want to be able to think the way I use to, without the drugs, without the holes in my memories, without the paranoia of fuzzy visions being the only thing I'll have of the past four months.

Instead, I think about this team, or what I haven't met of it: Adam and Bree. From the photos General Whitman showed me, they could pass as siblings but closer observation shows they hardly have any similar facial features except for the hair color and eyes.

Why would They want Adam away from here? He's the eldest of us experiments, so could that make him the most useful? Or is the word I'm looking for dangerous?

Why would They try so hard to keep Bree from regaining consciousness if They could just wipe her memory like They did to mine? Unless—

My heart hammers; I begin to sweat and shake. This is different. I feel alive and pained and hurt but right in all the right ways—the good ways.

But the pain—oh God, the _pain_. It feels like my bones are shattering and my blood is thickening, about to exploding from underneath my skin. My body temperature rises faster and faster, sweat pouring down my face and arms, soaking my clothes.

I arch, clutching at the thin filthy sheets of my prison cot as I begin to slide sideways, falling to the floor.

"Chase?" Leo asks, hearing the very audible thud my body makes after making impact with the floor. Never in my life have I been so thrilled to feel the cool sting of freezing concrete. It hisses with my body, making me cry in relief and pure agony, the feeling of both emotions overwhelming me.

"What's happening?" Leo asks again, dropping from his own cot and crawling over to my curled up body. He's slow and cautious, sticking his hands out inches in front of him and belly crawling until his skinny fingers brush against my arm. I hiss as he places his sensitive and cold fingers against my burning flesh.

I squint trying to make him out. I go to speak (I've felt this way before; hard to forget—I would never forget) but my lungs are being brutally squeezed by invisible hands and my throat is clogged with something as smothering as cotton, air making me gag.

It doesn't take long for the loud bang and crash of our cell bars to slam open. They file in, lifting and prodding at me. They stick needles into my veins and talk in loud, robotic tones they make my ears whine and hurt.

I can't remember much else about Their panic, but I can remember the stiff feel of the make-shift gurney below my body. I can remember the stinging effect of the harsh ceiling lights above me.

I can remember the raw, metallic taste of blood filling my mouth as my surroundings fade into nothing.

**{:::::::::}**

Everything's a collage of blurry edges. Stalagmites of piercing black and white edges sharpen and fade around me as I fall. Or do something that feels like falling. But it's hard to tell, because at the moment, I can't remember what doing anything feels like.

My limbs are numb, but tired, like I finished doing something excruciating and am physically worn beyond my limit. What could I have done to make me feel like that? Why am I feeling like this?

"Subject C? Are you receiving audio, Chase?" Something crackles and everything spins falling, my body falling quicker, but never to hit a solid surface.

"Who is that?" I cry, my voice a raspy mess. Something drips into my eyes, stinging it briefly before any signs of pain fades. "Why can I hear you? What have you done to me?"

Blood continues to drip from places on me, spilling from injuries I didn't know I had. Its feel was thick and wet as it fell from a cut sliced into my forehead, or poured from the stab wound in my left thigh.

"Chase, listen to me very carefully, okay?" The voice is low and commanding, knowing its' in control. My mind reacts to it as if switched into autopilot. Suddenly I'm alert, waiting for directions. It sounds like a man; I know this man.

Somehow, he is my guide.

"What you are feeling now, is your past self from the battle they called on us," he continues, coming from all around me, but nowhere. "We are going to fight, and we are going to win. Because you are bionic; you cannot fail."

"I cannot fail," I repeated, the words feeling so familiar on my mouth but I can never remember saying them as many times as my mind believes.

"Listen to me," he says, and I strain to gather his next words. "You are going to wait for the two points to meet. That is our sign. It's our sign to attack."

"Attack what?" I shout, blood specks falling faster and faster down my numb limbs as the sharpened and fading black and white edges begin to smoothen and fold into nothing. "I don't understand."

The inkiness comes rushing up to meet me, to engulf my wounded body. I feel tired and just want to sleep, ridding myself of the horrible aches.

"Observe and conquer."

**{:::::::::}**

I awaken with a jolt, my heavy pants filling the ice cold room.

Blank gray walls surround me, looking fuzzing as I try to sudden lightness above me and the freezing temperature.

Once again I'm strapped to a stiff surface underneath me. But unlike my first coming to at the faculty, it is a firm, uncomfortably stiff mattress much like my cot, in place of the table.

Where am I? It smells strongly of sterile fluids and an overload of Windex. My nose begins to burn, the smell overriding my senses enough to make my eyes sting.

The hours I spend in tied down to the hospital cot stretch ahead of me, endless as I'm left with only my thoughts and the constant loud thud of beating heart for poor company. They haven't noticed I'm awake yet, not in here to chart it and my movements. No doubt so They can report to the big boss that They have once again fixed a broken experiment.

For now, I stare at the blank ceiling, the bright light above me no longer making my retinas sting. That thing I went through before I awoke. It wasn't a dream, or flashback into the four months out of my reach. But the voice is so familiar but strange to me. The way my instincts reacted to it, so immediate and quickly, like I just _knew _to follow along with whatever he said, frightens me. Is he the scientist that General Whitman already screams at me about? Is he a part of the bigger picture?

_Observe and conquer._

So much like divide and conquer, that I know it's a strategy just as well. To observe was obvious-keep an eye on all your surroundings, take note of everything around you. I was given that advice much before the time I can't recover.

I know because my father taught me much of the same thing.

But did Leo know this? If what I think about the scientist is true, I'm closer than I think to what really happened. But did Leo, my alley, my teammate, a part of the bigger picture as well, know what I was supposed to conquer? Were-are-we suppose to conquer it together, as a team?

My head spins, throbbing from thinking too many things at once.

I sigh, the sound louder than needed, in the large, vast space.

I turn my head, watching the monitor that beeps back at me sharply, in time with my heart. Taking in the mere time between the beeps, I frown.

_My father is a doctor. I know these types of things._

A heart beating as fast as mine is supposed to be alarming. To doctors and the patient. But I feel fine. I'm dizzy and a little annoyed at my pounding head, but that is the drugs slowly winding through my body, poisoning my veins. These are not the symptoms of a fast-beating heart.

My heart is supposed to be beating this way. It's supposed to have milliseconds between the beats-like I just finished a marathon that went for many miles. My body was adjusted to it. Almost as if -

Almost as if it went any slower, it would mean I am about to die.

This worries me about many things-about Adam, Bree, Leo, myself. Did the people at the other Faculty know this about Adam, and went unconcerned for his fast beats? Is this the reason They keep Bree in a coma, because They don't like the rate of her heart?

What if they're attempts to calm our hearts kills us? They don't know us; They don't deserve to.

I lay there, perplexed, but not afraid. I am built for this, I realize. To undergo such extreme measures in case someone ever did try to do these things to me.

I am more superior than any human, physically enhanced.

Does my family know of this? Did they approve of it?

Do they even care that I'm gone?

**Yeah I know I've kept you waiting forever and then I give you a pretty sucky chapter. I can't guarantee you'll find the next one to be better than this one, but I for one think it is. But coming from me that probably means nothing to you so...yeah...**

**Chapter 5 is already in the works, about halfway done, I believe. I can't promise that it will be out immediately after this one, but reviews will speed up the updating process.**

**Please leave a review and tell me what you think the voice means by "Observe and Conquer". Have any you figured Their purpose yet? Or who that helpful little voice was inside Chase's head?**


	5. 005

**I know updates have been really spotty for this story, and I know I said it would be because of my updating system, but really it isn't.**

**I have the ideas and everything, but I'm slow with updates because I haven't been receiving enough feedback for me to think people are actually interested. And I've been really busy with my other stories and ideas that I've kind of just let this one hang for a bit.**

**But throughout most of August and all of September, I will work on DS more and make sure it's completed by Halloween. Yes, that is my goal.**

**In total, DS should have 12-15 chapters, with an epilogue. I plan on doing a sequel, small review amount or not.**

**The ending chapters should be longer than these ones now though.**

**That's all I have to say on that. I've been working on this chapter for a while so the timeline might be a little spotty. Sorry.**

* * *

For the next two days I'm kept in the hospital like room, no trips to the interrogation room included. At one point they did let Leo visit, because I think They pitied us.

Leo's visit was short.

"Are you okay?" he asked, his tone not necessarily concerned or worried, but more curious.

I nodded, even though he couldn't see it. "Just fine."

With sensitive fingers, he touched the IV plugged into my arm, and his lips twitched at the corners. "Still hopping you up on drugs, I see," he said with a sarcastic bite to his words. "Idoits be damned."

I gave a weak chuckle, my eyes darting to Them, who watched our interaction intently through the glass window. They were two gray-faced, wrinkled women in too-large labcoats with observant clipboards in their hands. They looked sleepy, as do all the others.

_The Government keeps Them on drugs, too, _I think.

Leo waited and stared sightlessly at where his hand was on my IV. I could tell by the tense muscles in his arms he was tempted to yank it. To prove something to Them; or, was just looking for a little trouble to see what happens.

"Leo?" I said, and he cocked his head, not giving a reply. I continued. "The drugs, they're meant to kill us, aren't they?"

He let go of my cord, tilted his head further to the beep-beep-beep of my heart monitor. He, unlike when I first realized it, didn't look alarmed at the fast beeps of it.

"Not kill us," Leo drawled finally. "But slow us. Destroy us inside and out. They don't like that they came up with us first, therefore we are the weaker versions, unfit for Their plans."

"What will They do when we are destroyed?" I asked, swallowing thickly. But that' was the thing; I didn't feel afraid. I felt strong, despite the headaches. I felt okay-nothing They were doing is working yet.

The big boss wouldn't be pleased to hear that.

Leo chuckled darkly, slowly making his way to the door by running his hand on the length of my hospital cot. "You don't need to worry about that," he says simply, sounding as unafraid as I feel. "We're the better versions. Stronger, built for more. Nearly indestructible."

"What's that mean?"

He froze, his hand stopping on the doorknob.

"It means we're the good ones."

**{~~~~~~~~~~}**

The day They let me return to my cell, with Leo lazily waiting on his cot, I faint onto mine in relief, my muscles sore, wrists aching. I feel a little funny, but not in the hung over way that alert me that-maybe, somehow-the drugs finally are doing something to me. But funny in a way that an area behind my neck ached.

But, aching or not, it doesn't hurt. I don't moan in pain over it, or flinch when it comes, like the headaches. I just let it be.

By now, Leo knows me too well. He doesn't greet me when I come, doesn't talk. And neither do I. I bury my face in the dirty, worn sheets of my cot, thinking about his words from his visit.

Leave it to Leo to be so vague about something so huge. In a way, that makes me hate him, but also makes me find him incredibly clever. Not giving out any outright information. Avoiding punishment that way.

But his description on why we aren't defective against the drugs sends an unwilling chill down my spine. But, it also fills me to the brim with relief. That way, no matter what drugs our bodies are forced to feed on, Adam, Bree, Leo, and I will be safe. And they are my team. If they aren't safe, that means I failed them, and him.

Not that my brain is clear on exactly who him is. Not yet, anyway.

_We're the good ones_. Is there more than one kind of us? Our production codes-does this mean we are a type of machinery?

No, this idea is immediately rejected as I pinch my arm-made of flesh, blood, and bones. I hear my heart, beat under my ribcage. I am human, but more than that as well. But if I am more than what I am, what does that truly make me?

Leo knows, but he isn't what I am-what Adam, Bree, and I are. But he can undergo the same drugs as we, and still remain strong. Hell, maybe even stronger. He isn't quite human either, but not what They think he is. He is simply a partner, a teammate.

But dammit it all if he ever lets Them know that.

Because I know this, I feel a bit guilty when I see Leo blindly looking up at the ceiling. He was punished simply for being involved, even when They weren't even focusing on him. They are commanded to focus on us - the bionics.

Leo begins pacing as I sit up. Before they transferred me to the infirmary-like place, it wasn't a habit that he had. I suppose it could have been something he began doing in my absence, but it seems so unlike him. Pacing is something people do when they have nerves or feel anxious about something; it's hard for me to think of Leo feeling anything but superiority.

"You know, this is really getting ridiculous," Leo states drily. His voice is void of emotion, but it shows clearly in the way his pacing speeds up a little, his bony frame turning sharply to switch directions. "I know they want to do something; it's my thing - knowing stuff, you know? But we've been here a little over a month, all this suspense crap is really starting to annoy me."

This is the first time I've ever seen Leo blow up before, and I'm at a loss of what to do. It never occurred to me that all of this would make him explode much like I wanted to at times, and it's possible that my freak-out had been the last straw. And to take all of this -different emotions, being taken away by someone you love, your family, being used as a lab rat - is hard enough to endure even without missing one of your sentences.

It seems like the perfect time to bring up the odd voices I am compelled to listen to, but I didn't know how.

"Then, why don't we do something?" I ask, looking at him.

Leo stops. For a beat he's so still that his chest barely rises as he breathes. Then, he laughs. Like actually, gut-hurting, side-aching laughter. The sound is so sudden and loud and unexpected, I nearly topple over.

"What did you have in mind?" he asks, his voice fading into a mass of chuckles.

"We need to see Bree again," I say seriously.

**{~~~~~~~~~~}**

Leo claims to never have snuck out before the first time we did together, but I know that couldn't be true. He's too good at mapping the whole place, being able to scope out the directions we need to go and the halls we had to sneak down better than I ever could even with the plus of sight.

The walk to where they keep Bree feels shorter than before. I tell myself it's because I feel more familiar was sneaking around, and am not gawking at everything I pass anymore.

The door swings open without a sound other than the slight click it makes when Leo unlocks it. We step inside and close to the door, sealing us in.

Bree still lays, IVs poking into her arm. Again I catch sight of the code on her skin and wonder where mine is, or if I really want to know.

_Does Adam have one too, wherever he is?_ I think to myself.

Not for the first time I torture myself with the worst case scenarios of why he's in a different location than us, and what they could be doing to him.

We were team—we are still one, but apart and in need of fixing. That kind of goal is hard to go after when one of us can't see, another is in a coma, and the third person unable to remember four months of his life.

Unless the leader voice inside my head suddenly offers a solution that would fix our entire ordeal, we won't be going down the pathway to success any time soon.

Tentatively I touch the numbers on her neck. The skin underneath the numbers is smooth, almost as if isn't marked in the first place.

Suddenly she twitches under my touch.

Leo's head tilts to the side. He heard the ruffle of her clothes against the surface of the metal table.

"What was that?" he asks, but I'm already taking his hand and bringing him to my side of the table, putting his fingers on top of the numbers like mine had been.

"Do feel that?" I say when I see her twitch again. It's almost as if the physical contact we make is sending waves of electricity through her, making her want to jump off the table.

"She's moving," Leo says in wonder. I think that he's too smart to hope for anything that would include her waking up, but had never thought about it like I do at night.

I nod, even though he can't see it.

A rush starts to gather in my stomach and heads upwards to explode through my chest. I feel my vision beginning to darken around the edges.

"_I can't believe you hit him with your car," a female voice muttered in pity and disdain as I began to come to, everything feeling sore and throbbing._

_An older male voice started to protest. "I didn't see him! He wasn't exactly glowing in the dark, you know."_

_I laid there, listening to them bicker back and forth as the massive pain in my limbs faded little by little._

"_Guys," a male voice said, sounding around the age of the girl's. "He's moving."_

_Both of the voices immediately dropped silence at this. Taking this as my cue, I slowly pried my eyes opened. I was greeted with the sight of a high, metal-beamed ceiling instead of the painful blinding light of a hospital room that I was used to getting when waking up in pain._

_I heard loud beeps of machinery around me, different things and mechanisms creating dim lights to go along with them._

_Reluctantly I sat up, looking around me. There were four people, the girl and man I had heard earlier, a lanky dude sitting in a chair dripping a tablet, and a tall, built guy leaning against the wall in front of me beside a huge automatic set of doors._

"_Hello, I'm Donald Davenport," the man introduced himself, holding out his hand._

_Reluctantly, I took his outstretched hand and shook it. "Chase Pierce."_

"_See, at least he remembers his own name!" Donald said to the girl standing beside the table I was on, her arms crossed over her chest._

"_My dad ran you over with his fancy car," she explained, before sticking out her own hand. "Bree Davenport. The lug nut on the wall is my older brother Adam, and the stick in the chair is our step-brother Leo."_

_Both of the boys nodded their heads at me before giving their sister offended looks._

"_What is this place?" I asked, looking around the big room. It had several control panels and large glass cylinders going from the floor to ceiling instead of a wall behind me. Was he some kind of doctor?_

"_Basically, this is your home for the rest of your life," Bree said bluntly, not clarifying herself any further._

_Donald gave her a glowering look before turning to me, giving an anxious smile. "You see, in order to help you live—"_

"_Big D put a chip in your neck," the guy named Leo spoke up, looking up from his tablet and speaking directly to me for the first time, "It strengthened your heart and helped your body with most of the massive blood loss. Now you're bionic. Just like Adam and Bree."_

* * *

**This chapter is pretty much a filler, but I keep getting sidetracked, but I will to work harder on this to get the chapters worked on and finished.**

**I do have another story in the works that is not published. It's pretty much a Marcus story because of a recent trend involving him, but it won't out until September or October. Or when this story is finished, whatever comes first.**

**Please review and tell me what you think because I love hearing your feedback!**


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